


Draco Vulgaris

by OxfordOctopus



Series: OxfordOctopus' Snips'n'Snaps [36]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Alt-Power Taylor Hebert, Attempt at Humor, Canon-Typical Violence, Dragons, Swamp Dragon (Discworld)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:34:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28430985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OxfordOctopus/pseuds/OxfordOctopus
Summary: Taylor can make dragons.It's... not all that it's cut out to be.
Series: OxfordOctopus' Snips'n'Snaps [36]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1435474
Comments: 12
Kudos: 92





	Draco Vulgaris

By her estimate, Brockton Bay was among the very few places where arson and rain could coexist meaningfully.

Such as right now, where rain less fell, more procrastinated in heavy, foggy clouds above, with the occasional smattering of uncertain raindrops, and where the alleyway surrounding her would spit and hiss as its smouldering interior threatened to break out into a full fire at a moment’s notice.

Not to even mention the screaming! Though, to be fair that wasn’t exactly uncommon in Brockton Bay _either_.

Which possibly raised the first question any good Brocktonite might have: what the _fuck_ is going on? An astute, valid question that Taylor, sometimes known as Snallygaster, was not entirely willing to comment on. A second question any good Brocktonite might have, following that hypothetical first, was ‘what sort of name is _Snallygaster_?’, which the answer to that was ‘the only other option left was Jabberwocky, and we all know how people can be about Ellisburg’.

All of that in mind, it did bring the ever-inquiring Brocktonite back to one central question, now that all of that culturally-mandated interrogation was done with: what is going on?

The answer to that, however reluctant, was a _very bad day_ , by Taylor’s estimate anyway.

“GET OUT HERE!” Spitfire, somehow managing to pitch her voice to carry despite wearing a heavy-duty gas mask, screeched in her general direction, voice reedy with rage. “YOU FUCKHEAD!”

Ensconced rather unsafely behind what had might’ve been a concrete barrier in the past, before it had evidently lost a fight with a truck, Taylor rather strategically ignored the hurled insults, as well as the general noise of the rest of Faultline’s Crew making a scene. She had, perhaps unwisely, pissed them off—not that it was _entirely_ her fault, really. Had they not wanted to be the target of law enforcement, they should’ve probably tried not to break the law.

Glancing down, to where her minions were collected - a grand total of 4 dragons about the size of a cat, each one looking various shades of queasy, anxious or lazy - she was, in her own opinion, fairly certain it was _their_ fault. Or at least mostly a combination of her, for lack of any better descriptor, ‘dragons’, being incapable of doing remotely anything without exploding like fleshy hand-grenades.

That probably raised a third question, really, screamed out by the inquiring Brocktonite in a hellish demand. How the _fuck_ was she losing if she could make dragons?

Good question! It was because they were awful.

See, to those unprepared for the sentence ‘hi, I can leak flesh from my hands and sculpt them into dragons’, one may expect something regal. Something grand. Something truly evocative of the name ‘dragon’, and to her minion’s credit? They looked at _least_ like they were third cousins with the aforementioned noble beasts. Her dragons were to the conventional understanding of a dragon that chihuahuas were to the conventional understanding of _wolves_.

Yes, certainly related. They’ve got a snout, doggy ears, a button nose, a tail, and sort-of have a similar general shape, but have you ever noticed how there was something... _off_ about a chihuahua? Something vaguely uncanny, like it was _just_ removed enough from your concept of a ‘dog’ that it was verging into ‘not-dog’, and as a direct consequence made you feel like you should maybe keep a few feet of distance from the thing? Well, that was her dragons. Size included.

Looking closely at her—her... she’d never figured out a good name for a group of the things. A clutch felt too regal for the scrawny shits. Maybe a disappointment? She’d go with a disappointment. Looking more closely at her disappointment of dragons, Taylor really tried to take them in. There were four, all told, all clustered around her legs like greedy stray dogs, trying to get at food that wasn’t there, though to their credit they could digest - if not necessarily _chew_ \- anything they swallowed, so they were hardly at a loss for viable sources of nutrients. Each of them was, technically, capable of flight, in much the same way a chicken might be, what with the wings, and quite a lot like chihuahuas, now that Taylor was thinking about it, they were all explosively violent.

Er—rather, _violently explosive_ , as it was.

See, her dragons, as was expected, were capable of breathing fire. Except, unlike in fantasy novels, her horrible little monstrosities had to achieve that _biologically_. There would be no spontaneous pyrokinesis here, no, life was entirely too fucking unfair, so her dragons had to make the fuel themselves and contain it within various stomachs, to be combined together into the rough equivalent of rocket fuel.

This, not surprisingly, made them hilariously unstable. Combined with a general attitude somewhere between a ginger cat and a toucan, as well as habitual stomach problems, every last one of the things she made were highly prone to spontaneous explosion at a moment’s notice. Indigestion might be the main cause, but they could also go off for any number of reasons! Stress, spite, physical abuse, random chance. You name it, she’d probably been showered in gore because of it by now.

A streak of something unspeakable and foamy, coloured the same green as Lady Liberty, hurtled over her head, splashing into the far wall with a wet, deeply unpleasant noise, sticking in place, foaming and looking almost as though it was _boiling_.

That, she was pretty sure, was _probably_ Gregor. Nice guy, if you didn’t attack him, anyway.

All things considered though, it was probably best to avoid being boxed in by a team including someone who can melt concrete with her spit and one guy who can leave you so high you don’t feel pain anymore. Taylor leaned down, gesturing with her hands as all four - one puce, one dull iron, one calico, and one genuinely the colour of shit - clambered up onto various parts of her clothes. Thank whatever god her dragons came _trained_ , at the very least. She didn’t have to think much about how to dictate and control them, and they never snapped at her.

Picking the shit-coloured dragon - largely because he was more of an eyesore than the rest - she eased him up a little, from where he was dangling stubbornly from her sleeve, talons biting into her skin, and looked him dead in his dewy, pitiful eyes. He knew his fate already, and she knew better than to give in to the very rare display of affection or cuteness. “I want you,” she said slowly, because the stupid thing probably wouldn’t get it otherwise. “To make a mess.”

The dragon blinked at her, long and slow, looking reluctant, but was unable, thankfully, to really contradict her commands. Detaching from her sleeve, the brown dragon clattered to the floor, its stomach gurgling unpleasantly as it, as far as she could sense, rearranged its intestinal tract to prepare for the suicide mission ahead.

She left him to it.

Ducking as far down as she could go, she spread both of her hands out in front of her and pulled, not terribly gently, on the odd, not entirely physical feeling she’d gotten since she’d first obtained her powers. It was like hauling a valve open, in a lot of ways, and that was a rather evocative statement, considering her hands started leaking what was by her own estimate liquid flesh and nutrients.

The process of making a dragon was one she had to generally handle with care. While she seemed by most estimates to be immune to being injured when her dragons exploded in her face, it was still a generally stupid idea to handle highly explosive creatures carelessly.

Which, of course, meant she had to rush this one.

“OH GOD, DON’T YOU FUCKING DA—”

Well, at least shit-brown was getting something done. Good for him. Lord knows, Spitfire certainly deserved it for the mouth she had.

Rushing the creation of a dragon was both physically exhausting and prone to creating a dragon that’d light up like a hand grenade the second it realized it had been born into the world, but she’d been practicing in the weeks since she’d first gotten her powers, started to figure out how exactly they _worked_. At the moment, she was letting her power guide her, help her shape the body of the dragon, twisting and churning, but she was trying very very hard to make a single type of dragon, one she’d had moderate success at making before: what she had come to call a _golden wowser_.

Why was it a golden wowser? Because it had been gold, and it had been the sole dragon to actually make her impressed with the raw damage capabilities it had. Not to say that the other dragons couldn’t scorch someone or take off a leg with a well-placed detonation, no, they were certainly capable of that. But a golden wowser? The flame it spat out was _concentrated_ , like a spot welder. It didn’t mind being held around like a gun either, which meant she could probably, y’know, go somewhere with that.

Finishing up her glob of unspeakable flesh juice, Taylor let her eyes slip back down to her creation. She clearly needed more experience, as what had come out was... superficially similar, sure. Golden enough, about the right shape, but she knew, just from the odd part of her ability that let her generally _sense_ her creations, that it was not a golden wowser. More of a pyrite embarrassment, really. Close enough in appearance and function, but off-brand.

Still, it wasn’t like she was in a place to complain. Scooping up one of the various chunks of concrete scattered around, she shoved the fist-sized lump at the dragon’s mouth. “Eat,” she commanded, and it did, as dragons as a general rule did not particularly need encouragement to eat.

“GET IT OFF, GET IT OFF, GET IT OFF—”

Any good, knowledgeable person would probably be asking, by this point, ‘why on earth did you attack a mercenary group if your dragons are this shitty’. The answer to that was, as with a lot of things, a bit complicated.

See, Brockton Bay is run by three gangs communally, in the same sense that an authoritarian dictator ‘communally’ runs the country he just freed from democracy and civil rights. The neo-nazis - Empire 88 - ran the law enforcement and most big businesses in the city, the ABB anything gambling, sex, or, surprisingly, grocery related, and the Merchants more or less ran anything that was left over.

Now, the thing about that communally-ran city was that it was a particularly _fragile_ balance, one that a lot of the time felt like a monopoly. Focus on any one gang too much and you’re liable to end up being fished out of the harbour by a few reluctant police members, with a good chance that at least one of them was involved in your untimely death. That’s the way most independent heroes normally went, really. The sign of any good independent hero in Brockton Bay was when they stopped being one.

Which meant actually fighting villains meant picking your targets _very_ carefully. Brockton Bay wasn’t the sort of high-glamour richy-rich gang city like Detroit, where it had a healthy cycle of gangs coming in and out of relevance. Brockton was stagnant, and you risked fucking everything up if you targeted one too hard, and also risked being fucked up as a direct consequence. It was, by her own estimate, why the gangs were so... _intense_ about the retaliation they put out.

But even then, that wasn’t enough. In theory, had she actually gotten the ability to make, like, _dragon-dragons_ , and not their inbred, ball sack-shaped cousins, and wasn’t immediately gunned down for it, and did, in fact, take out one of the other gangs, you want to know what would happen? One of the other two would just take over the territory and whatever capes cropped up and become, yet again, even more powerful.

You would, effectively, accomplish nothing. It was an unwinnable situation, which meant you had to learn to simply not play the game in the first place.

Leave the nazis and the pimps and the drug kingpins to their little kingdoms and target the vulnerable criminals, in other words. It was basically a Brocktonite tradition, that. Culling the weak was all in a day’s work, a rite of passage almost.

Pyrite - as she was now shortening the name to, as it was not worth the extra 4 syllables - finished digesting the rock with a rather audible gurgle, glancing pitifully towards her once again. It was probably still hungry, her damn little monsters were _always_ hungry, but as it stood she didn’t really have the time to let the thing pig out on concrete and rubber tires.

Reaching down, she - _very gently_ \- eased Pyrite up, holding him at one end by his tail, and at the other by his throat. A pinch of his jowls and his mouth opened. Probably wouldn’t have great accuracy, but if nothing else, very few things can exactly deal with being set violently on fire.

In hindsight, Faultline’s Crew probably wasn’t the smartest target, but unfortunately they were, by and large, the only. Trying to find the Undersiders in any meaningful capacity had firmly entrenched the idea into her mind that they were either cryptids or someone’s idea of a joke, and the other independent villains generally needed to be spotted mid-crime, and most of them only really did smash-and-grabs. When your only options are exploding dragons, the world is a whole lot of tinder, and while some property damage was acceptable, she was relatively certain burning Chariot alive in a hardware store would get her arrested.

Targeting Faultline’s Crew was supposed to be simple. Confront them, maybe rough one up if needed, let them go. It was the Brockton cycle—even the heroes did it! I mean, just look at Shadow Stalker. The girl had a literal fucking _body count_ and they were willing to look the other way. That was just how things worked.

But _no_ , of course they had to have a fucking _reality warper_.

Sneaking her head up from behind her embankment, Taylor glanced back into the open alleyway she’d been corralled into in the first place. It was one of those old alleyways where you could tell there used to be a building at one point, where two narrow corridors opened up into a large pavilion-like space. All concrete, all with signs of a past structure, but not a whole lot left.

Faultline’s Crew were making steady progress towards her, against her better judgement. There were a few places where she’d at least gotten them to fall back a bit, as evidenced by gore-spattered walls and scorch marks, but that had been back when she’d had next to eight dragons. The five - likely soon to be four - she had now were all made in the last thirty minutes of her fighting retreat.

Still, it wasn’t exactly hard to find where her shit-dragon had gone. Faultline was standing in the middle of the alley, one arm outstretched as she tried to dislodge shit-brown from her costume’s sleeve, where he had latched on like a motherfucker. Not to say that he was trying otherwise, of course, he had gone limp and was currently half-covered in whatever snot Gregor had concocted in his snail body, but he was still holding on.

Didn’t make him any less of a fucking coward, but then that was the general nature of her dragons. Cowards and explosives, the lot of them. Usually both.

Honestly speaking, she’d come to the conclusion that tonight was a bust. A bad night, one she had to acknowledge and move on from. She wasn’t winning anything tonight, so it was best to just not try. Faultline could go pout in her weird fucking night club or whatever, she was _done_.

Dragging herself to a full stand, Taylor caught the attention of the villains across-the-alley from her. They all stared at her with varying levels of animosity - with Spitfire, despite wearing a full face covering, all but radiating hate - and she, in turn, pointed a dragon in their direction.

“You are just going to let me go.”

“Like _fuck_ we are,” came Spitfire’s retort, not unexpectedly. “You ambushed us!”

“And you’re a shitty approximation of one of my dragons,” she replied in turn, because it was true and it always made Spitfire pissed. “We all have our faults. We can do a clean break, here. Not set any other houses on fire.”

The thing was, despite housing fires being scarily common in the ‘Bay, especially considering its population, most places didn’t have insurance anymore. Insurance fraud had been so high in Brockton’s past that the insurers had simply stopped offering it after a point. Nowadays, a solid third of the city went completely uninsured, without any options to get it.

But that wasn’t really relevant, and—why were they staring at her like that?

It’s the heat she can feel first, really. Like the distant warmth of a campfire, or that shitty fire hazard of a space heater Dad dragged out every winter. She felt herself freeze, after that—not, you know, _get cold_ or whatever, but rather all of her body tensing up like a taut wire. Next, she turned, slowly, not sure what she was going to find, but knowing somewhere deep down, in her instincts as honed by living in Brockton Bay, that it was going to be unpleasant.

Wouldn’t you know it, she was completely right.

In a row, Lung, Oni Lee, and what she was fairly certain was their newest recruit, Bakuda, were staring at her. The ABB, the gang with, funnily, the lowest number of capes, and yet the most terrifying presence. Sure, Kaiser might want to euthanize anyone who wasn’t white or straight enough, but Lung? Lung was a _fucking_ dragon, who recruited people whose first response to getting powers was ‘hold my entire fucking university up with a bomb threat’ and who probably thought that was ‘a really good use of terrifying others’.

Lung was staring less at her, and more at her dragons, which really brought up the next reason why she was less than entirely fond of her power: Lung. Everything he was, her power very much wasn’t. Unlike her, he didn’t _make_ dragons, he _became_ one. Crazy fucking bastard was a pyrokinetic and could transform into a very literal dragon. There were _pictures_. He looked like a fucking _Endbringer_ , and that was always bad news.

Especially not helping was how intense his stare was. She could understand being stared at, to a point, her costume consisted of a put-together bunch of outerwear and jeans with shin, knee and elbow guards added at random intervals, capped off by a rubber dragon head for a mask she got for $3 at a shifty yard sale, which flipped and flopped with even tiny movements. But that wasn’t the sort of stare Lung was giving, no, most people saw her costume and gave her _pitying_ stares, or of humour. This was... different. Scrutinizing.

Hell, she could even see her own damn mask in _his_ infinitely cooler steel dragon mask. Ugly, garish piece of shit. His, she meant, she was totally fond of her mask. Made people underestimate her.

“You... what are you doing in my territory?” Lung’s voice was growly in a sort of cool way, but really hard to decipher. His thick accent did not go well with sounding like he spoke by grinding small rocks in his throat together.

But, to his point, a quick glance around her environment did very much confirm she’d somehow staggered into ABB territory after that fuck-up of an ambush. She’d hit them not too far from the Palanquin, if she was remembering correctly, and while that was _abstractly_ near ABB territory, it also kinda really _wasn’t_.

Jesus christ, how lost _was_ she?

Lung continued to stare at her, or rather through her, as it felt like his stare was just about burning holes in her body.

“Just fighting,” she said, remembering he was, even if not in choking distance, much closer than any sane person would want. When he said nothing, stare still drilling holes in her head, she found herself awkwardly appending a “sir” onto the end of it.

For a moment, the standoff remained.

“...Who are your ancestors?”

Bakuda, understandably, started groaning.

By comparison, her brain just mostly clicked and shuddered to a halt. If a single phrase could emphasize her consciousness at that moment, it would certainly be:

“I beg your pardon?”

Lung blinked at her from behind his mask. “Who are you descended from?”

Oh shit, she’d said that out loud. Not totally unsurprising, considering her brain had become optimized for exactly two things after her trigger, one of which was a prodigious understanding of chemical mixtures to create explosives. Something, might she add, that you should not be giving to a socially isolated teenage girl with anger issues.

Thank god for outlets.

The other half of her brain, chugging along with its lack of oxygen, managed to access the one other thing she was good at: remembering odd and obscure factoids about things she researched at some point in her distant past. In this case, 3rd grade social studies.

“France, sir?”

Or at least, she thought as much. Dad had always been cagey on that part, especially because his family had only been in America for four generations by the point of his birth. She’d always got the impression the Heberts had been involved with something rather illegal in France. Probably something related to the guillotine, knowing her father’s passions.

“...Are you certain.”

Dumb question, in Taylor’s opinion. “Ye—es?”

“Because most white people do not have curly hair.”

That was a bit of a stereotype, wasn’t it? Still, it was probably good to note. “I mean, it’s always possible. France was a bit hectic, but, you do know French people also have curly hair, right?”

Bakuda, for whatever reason, was making weird gestures at her. Fluttering her hands, making a weird slashy motion around her throat.

Lung, by comparison, was much less evocative, and merely stared at her for a moment. “Then,” he said, with great purpose, as though beginning an epic poem or some proclamation from god. “You have chosen death.”

Sorry. _What?_

Oni Lee, living up to his reputation, did not miss a beat. One moment he was only one person, and next there was an Oni Lee beside her _and_ in front of her. The one beside her was swinging a knife in her direction coming out of the teleport, and falling back on old instincts she didn’t know she had, Taylor did the one thing she could think of:

She shoved Pyrite in the way.

Whatever Oni Lee expected, it certainly wasn’t that, as Taylor became very briefly blinded in the accompanying cloud of giblets and gore that erupted from the now very exploded Pyrite. Banking out of the gore cloud in a way only born out of experience in grisly matters such as these, Taylor had just enough time to watch Oni Lee, now very much on fire, begin to teleport - or, maybe more accurately, rapidly clone himself - leaving behind dozens of screaming, burning clones of himself that not long after fell away into ash, not even remotely helping him stop being on fire.

Tracking her eyes towards Lung, she watched with the same sort of horror a bunny has when observing a ferret emerge from its burrow as he wiped the blood, slowly, from his gleaming mask. His skin began to ripple, bubbling almost, and his shoulders grew minutely, broadening.

Oh, shit.

Glancing between the growing Lung and Faultline’s Crew, she considered for a moment.

It took depressingly little to discard what fellowship she felt for man, hop the concrete barrier, and sprint in their direction.

“DON’T YOU DARE YOU _PIECE OF SHI_ —”

Lung interrupted whatever very rude thing Spitfire was about to say by trying to bathe them collectively in a frankly inhumane amount of fire. She could feel it nip at her back, at her ankles, but she was, blessedly, able to avoid being turned into a charred corpse.

She might’ve dragged Faultline’s Crew into the fight in the process but, again, empathy was in short supply lately.

Twisting back around, catching sight of both Gregor and Spitfire returning fire to Lung’s, well, fire, Taylor had a brief moment of clarity. She reached up to her shoulder dragon - the calico one - grabbed her by the lizard equivalent of a scruff, and pried her talons from the ball of her shoulder with no small amount of pain.

Pointing the damned thing towards Lung, the command was simple. “Bite the tail.”

Letting go of the dragon, Calico - as now named - flapped like a jittery hen, puttering into the air in the slow, meandering arc of a poorly-punted soccer ball. Lung, much too distracted in his attempts to avoid both the parahuman equivalent of napalm _and_ foul-smelling sticky gloop, was ill-prepared to match the awkward and staggered arc of the dragon as she summarily swooped down and latched onto his crotch with gusto.

Lung less bellowed, more shrieked, and swung one meaty arm down to rip the thing off.

In the same sense that poking a balloon full of gasoline with a hot poker was a bad idea, so was this, as with a shower of gore and dragon parts, Lung—well, _lost his dragon_ , as it was. And most of his pelvis, by her estimate.

His howling was all Taylor was really bothering to take into account as, wanting to keep herself alive, she turned on heel and bolted deeper into the complex of alleyways and concrete corridors that defined what she was somewhat certain was the docks.

Things had, clearly, gone from bad to worse in no small amount of time. That was actually rather normal in Brockton Bay. Unlike most of the world, people born and raised in Brockton Bay had different instincts; more primal ones. Where your average cape would curl up and take the beating, a cape - or, really anyone for that matter - from Brockton Bay was more liable to start screeching and attach itself to your front half like its monkey ancestors so-demanded. It meant fights really only ended when one was a corpse or beaten so thoroughly you moved about as much as one.

Taylor wasn’t sure if that was a cultural or genetic thing, or just like... something in the water.

If it was the latter, though, her money was on it being the lead.

“ _COM’ B’CK ‘ERE!_ ”

Turning her head mid-sprint, Taylor had the displeasure of seeing what by most estimates would be a nightmare. Faultline’s Crew, in full retreat, was sprinting close behind her. Or, in Gregor’s case, charging like a mighty bull. Behind them was Lung, now about eight, maybe nine feet tall, and very covered in scales, quite literally digging his claw-like hands into the walls to drag himself forward and towards them as his power worked on repairing what parts of his pelvis it could salvage.

Jesus fuck that was horrifying.

“This is your fault!” Spitfire screamed at her, nearly catching up as the group of them tumbled out through the alley and into what by most measures was a semi-busy street, heads turning to gawk and stare.

Still, Taylor couldn’t help it. She swung her head around, scowling. “How is it _my_ fault?!”

“You—”

Lung less arrived, more _exploded_ from the alley entrance, a veritable firestorm following him as he quite literally threw himself into the middle of the street. Flames licked over cars, buildings, caught onto shingling and trash left on the ground, smoke beginning to fill the air.

Just across the street from them, now that Taylor was closer to it than Lung by virtue of not being fireproof and not wanting to see if that had changed in the last 30 seconds, was the Ruby Dream’s Casino, if the sign was to be believed. It was, also, home to two large, vaguely calcified creatures about the size of small vans, had all of its windows bashed in, and included a line-up consisting of a hunk, a blonde, a butch, and a twink, all of them in costume.

The Undersiders. Huh.

Kinda surreal that they were real, in the end.

“ _‘OU!!_ ”

 _Okay!_ Probably a smart idea not to get distracted. Taylor kept her retreat up, edging closer towards the casino and away from where Spitfire was valiantly trying to put some fire between herself and the fireproof half-dragon. Not smart, but valiant.

“Tattletale, what the fuck,” the hunk said, his biker helmet muffling his voice a touch. “You said—”

The blonde, Tattletale apparently, reeled on him. “Do I look like a fucking precog to you?!” She screeched. “Fucking run!”

And they did. Smart, those ones.

Lung was still growing rapidly, though, and making his way very focusedly towards her. He’d grown another couple of feet, and the area around him was now blistering and bubbling. The _fucking concrete_. Bullshit, absolute, total and utter bullshit.

Which, you know, meant bullshit prizes.

Glancing between her two remaining dragons, she set her eyes on the prize: the eyes. Sure, Lung was scary, but could be scary blind? “Take his eyes out,” she commanded, with gusto.

Reluctantly, once more, her dragons detached themselves from her shoulders and threw themselves into the air, trailing awkwardly like the shaved chickens they very much resembled.

Lung, to his credit, was taking precautions. He whipped out a hand towards her approaching dragons and emptied a salvo of fire in his direction.

Less to his credit, he had apparently forgotten her dragons were ninety percent knock-off nitroglycerin, and the resulting fireball did more or less what she’d intended it to, Lung toppling to the ground, grasping at his eyes as chunky giblets rained in a scattershot around the surrounding area. Actually, now that she thought about it, she was pretty sure he also got both eyes full of whatever horrific stomach acid they cultivated.

Fucking shows him, too. Nobody gets to make her dragons explode but them and her. Fuck you. 

Still, no time like the moment, everyone present surged like a crowd, gaining some rather well-deserved distance from the ever-growing _motherfucking dragon_ , and Taylor took the time to slip around the side of the, now that she was looking, very robbed casino. Bringing both of her hands out, she was going to have to do something drastic. Something stupid.

She needed more backups.

Fuck the risk, even half-functional explosives were a better alternative to being maimed by Lung at this point.

The flesh goop started leaking as she leaned on her power, pouring between her fingers and taking semi-solid shape as she twisted, moulded and—

“The fuck are you doing?”

Taylor swung her head up and—it’s Spitfire. Of course. She glanced back at her dragon, ignoring her, already spotting an inconsistency she had to rub out with her thumb.

“Wait, is that seriously how you make them? I had you pegged as a Tinker.” Completely undeterred by her silence, Spitfire continued rambling, just barely audible over the sound of Lung’s bellows and roars of anguish. “That makes my explanation for why they’re so shitty kinda suspect, actually.”

“They just come that way,” Taylor spat, feeling a little venomous, as she finished up the remainder of the dragon. The flesh lit up, slowly congealing into a crude but ultimately very alive dragon.

Fatigue dogged her the second the new dragon came to look at her, an unsteady wheeze pressing itself out of her chest. Yeah, there was the second reason why her power was such a pain in the ass. Rushing a dragon - and by her estimate, this dragon _was_ rushed; already jittery and gurgling - was tiring as fuck. It made cleaning up the messes she made from rushing them all the more worse.

Hooking the little puce-coloured thing up, she placed him on her shoulder and spread both of her hands out again, letting the flesh come in torrents.

Off to the side of the alley, in the corner of her eye, one of Hellhound’s massive fuck-you lizards whipped past with a blast of air.

Lung’s accompanying roar of challenge was, perhaps, telling.

Taylor kinda really hated that. See, she’d done research on the gangs in the city, found out about everyone, including the ever-elusive Undersiders. This had led her to learn, subsequently, about Rachel Lindt, or Hellhound. She could turn cute dogs into massive behemoths of bone, flesh, and raw feral spirit. She got the best of both worlds: an incredibly strong and intimidating beast, _and_ a cute cuddle partner.

What did she get? Fucking... chihuahua dragons. Somewhere in between the two. Uncanny little fuckers.

Tying the second dragon off - this one coming out the colour of rust on copper - she hefted the bugger to her shoulder, sparing a moment to find some loose gravel and shovel it into both of her new companion’s mouths, before slouching down, her breathing coming hard, in pants. Sweat licked her brow, and she would’ve been able to rub it off, had it not been for the fucking mask in the way.

Speaking of, turning her head off to the side, Taylor spotted Spitfire staring closely at her. Curiously.

“ _What_.” She did not need this right now, sincerely. Today was already bad enough.

“Nothing. I just kinda thought your power was a bit like mine.”

At least she was admitting it.

“I wanted to see how it worked.”

Abstractly, their powers were similar. Taylor at least knew what her spit was made out of, thanks to whatever idiot thought giving her advanced knowledge of chemical mixtures was a smart idea. It was just that Spitfire, likely due to her being the only one with the napalm spit, didn’t have to worry about backlash causing her to explode. Taylor did.

“Well, now you know. I need to get at least one more to have a decent chance at living for the next ten minutes.”

Focusing this time came hard. There was a solid throb in her head, an unpleasant shakiness in her hands, but she was going to have to make a golden wowser this time. For real. No fucking Pyrite piece of shit offbrand. Her mouth felt like it was full of cotton, but the flesh flowed like flesh is probably never supposed to.

She glooped it together, made sure to get the horns just right, packed it all down hard.

After a moment, thank whatever fucking lord existed, a golden wowser stared back at her.

Fuck, she felt faint. What a head rush. Actual feelings of accomplishment mixed with physical exhaustion. Was this what it was like for people who enjoyed playing sports? No wonder they were all crazy bastards.

Taking a moment to regather herself and shovel whatever she could find into her golden wowser, Taylor glanced towards Spitfire. “What the fuck is going on out there, anyway?”

Spitfire, awkwardly, leaned back to glance out into the city street. “Circus somehow got involved?”

Oh no. “...the creepy clown?”

“Yeah, think they were working with the Undersiders.”

Yeah, well, clown capes were generally feared for a good reason. Chuckles had been an up-and-coming hero until he’d slaughtered an entire birthday party of kids and toddled off to join the Slaughterhouse 9. Whoever had the balls to be clown themed after _that_ sort of bullshit was clearly not fucking around.

“What else?”

“Lung is currently being mauled by Bitch’s dogs, though he’s growing to match them.”

Wait. “Who?”

Spitfire turned back to her. “Bitch.”

“Who is that?”

Despite the gas mask, she got the impression Spitfire wasn’t really sure what expression to have at this moment. “You know—Rachel Lindt?”

“You mean Hellhound?” Yeah, this was definitely helping her get her energy back. “You don’t have to be so crass. She has a name.”

“But she’s Bitch,” Spitfire tried, sounding a bit dim.

“That’s very rude to say about—”

One of the aforementioned dogs came into view, thrown back, presumably from where Lung was. Its titanic body scraped through the ground, all but carving a channel as concrete chunks buckled and hopped away. A few even got close enough that she could shovel them into her golden wowser, who was visibly trying his best to keep up with the intake.

Grabbing her wowser by the neck and tail, Taylor hefted him up. That was probably her cue.

“Anyway, think we can use that cover to—” 

“ATTENTION ALL VILLAINS: CEASE YOUR ACTIVITIES AT ONCE.”

Aaaand there’s the protectorate. Of _fucking_ course.

The Protectorate of Brockton Bay was a sizable group. Much bigger than the Protectorate for your average city of three-hundred thousand. That was, in large part, due to the fact that people treated a Brockton Bay deployment as a way to build a buffer between them and all the awful shit that went on in this city. The only person who actually seemed to be there of his own volition was _Armsmaster_.

An engine roared, rattling as the man himself crawled into view atop his shiny, shitty looking bike. On the back was Miss Militia, who got off with him as he kicked the stand out to let the bike remain upright. Up above, Aegis and Dauntless, the former of which was a Ward, which might also say something about Brockton when you’re sending kids to fight dragons, descended from on high, floating down to a careful distance.

The Tinker himself tracked towards them, his head all but snapping in their direction. He stepped forward once, twice, and then three times, just enough to make it clear it was very specifically him who he was addressing. “You are both under arrest for—”

“Me?!” Taylor couldn’t help it. “I’m a hero!”

Armsmaster stared at her. His expression was probably blank, though it was hard to tell with his visor.

“I’ve been doing patrols for weeks! Surely you’ve noticed!”

“In three weeks, you have set nine people on fire, two of whom have been hospitalized,” Armsmaster replied matter-of-factly, in a complete deadpan, like he wasn’t sure where either of them stood as of this moment.

“That’s just how it is with my power,” she explained, and rightfully so! Not everyone got to make, like, cool bikes or whatever. Some of them were much less lucky. “You have to understand that—”

“You are also an unregistered biotinker of unclear capabi—”

“I’m not!” she yelped, interrupting his interrupt. “I just—I just fucking make these dragons!”

There was a moment of silence, long and awkward. Armsmaster looked between her crudely put together dragons and her crudely put together costume, pausing.

“...then why are they all so crude? They are amateur.”

Spitfire, the heinous blight, snorted.

“That’s—” it was often Taylor was at a loss for words. She had a lot of those. Words. Usually, they came easier, but usually she wasn’t facing down scathing criticism as given by her childhood hero. “That’s just how it is. How they are.” She paused, something bubbling up in her throat, her impulse control buckling and promptly collapsing under the threat of ego death.

“Fuck you.”

Whatever undoubtedly eloquent reply Armsmaster had in response to that was very loudly cut off by Lung’s deafening roar. Heads swivelled, reminded of the reason why they were here in the first place, and how problems you ignore have an unpleasant habit of snowballing out of control.

Lung was, by her estimate, about fifteen feet tall. About as broad in the shoulder as she had in height, covered in scales, with wing-like nubs pressing out from his back, looking rather painful. The cement around him bubbled, and he peeled one of Bitch’s dogs off of his body and threw it into the building next to him with the same sort of casual ease reserved for swishing a juice box into a garbage bin.

He looked more dragon than human now. Significantly so.

This, people, was why your average rogue hero didn’t last very long. The main reason why those like The Elite hadn’t managed to make any headway into the city was because the relative power levels were, frankly, _fucked to shit_. If you wanted to play ball in Brockton, you had to play it hard. Preferably with the ability to annihilate things on touch or something.

She, meanwhile, had shit dragons. Fan-fucking-tastic. The only reason she hadn’t joined the fucking Wards out of genuine fear for her safety was—... well, actually a complicated bit of personal trauma surrounding being rejected by groups of people, now that she thought about it.

Lung’s roar managed to make thinking very hard, in the next few moments. Glass rattled, her dragons gurgled in misplaced challenge, and her ears felt like they were being crushed by something unseen.

Without warning, and with synchronicity born primarily out of survival instinct, most of the capes present converged on him as one. You barely saw that sort of coordination among Endbringer fights, honestly, but you might be able to fuck around in those. Here? Not so much.

Still, Taylor was content mostly to watch, in large part due to being completely and utterly disinterested in putting herself in the way of _that_.

“Oh thank fuck, mind if I—”

Taylor wheeled, wowser at the ready, only to come face to face with a _fucking clown._ She levelled her dragon more, stepping closer towards Lung, in this instant the lesser of two very great and eldritch evils.

“Now,” Circus began, sounding nervous. “You do _not_ need to point that farty abomination unto god at me.”

“So says the clown!” Taylor spat in return, because it was a very valid complaint.

Considering Circus only really wore face-paint, Taylor got the chance to watch as their face twisted into something very _genuinely_ offended. “What’s wrong with clowns?”

“What isn’t?!” This rant had been building up for a while. Since elementary, at the least, when she broke down in tears at a friend’s birthday party when a clown tried to say hello to her. “Haven’t you heard of Chuckles?!”

“Have you heard of Lou Jacobs?” Circus shot back.

Well, no. She hadn’t. “Who?”

“Exactly,” Circus said, with the sort of air of a person who thought they’d just won an argument and were very, very wrong. “I have a passion for clowns, not for Slaughterhouse 9 members or whatever!”

“It’s in bad taste!”

“Chuckles has been dead for like a decade!”

“Okay, can you both stop?”

Taylor swivelled towards Spitfire, who was glancing furtively out of the mouth of the alleyway.

“Because, uh,” Spitfire’s tone was weak, wary. “The PRT? They’re kinda losing against Lung.”

“Not unexpected, that,” Circus pointed out.

Against her better interests, Taylor found herself nodding along. “Nobody _wins_ against Lung,” she added. “You just lose more slowly.”

“Well, fucking _fine_ then!” Spitfire said, throwing both of her hands up in what was probably a show of exasperation. “They’re losing _very quickly_ and he’s making ground towards us and”—Spitfire took a moment to breathe—“ _need I remind you that you turned his cock into giblets?!_ ”

Lung roared, enraged, from the distance, loud enough to hurt.

“...and he can hear that,” Spitfire added. “All of this, really.”

Well, shit. Someone should’ve certainly fucking put _that_ on his Wikipedia page. “Okay, let's just get the fuck out of here in that case.”

That was, as it would happen, not a smart comment. Lung verbally made his displeasure known, his howling growing to a fever pitch as the sounds of combat grew more frenzied and full of screaming.

God... _fucking_ dammit. The PRT thought she was a villain, and now _Lung_ was going to be out for her fucking head for the foreseeable future. Best fucking night, clearly.

“Truce?” Circus, the now very much lesser of two evils, offered.

“Truce,” Taylor agreed, Spitfire echoing her not long after.

Tumbling out into the street as a group, Taylor was beholden to what, by all accounts, was now not just her worst day, but probably everyone else’s.

Miss Militia was emptying magazine after magazine into Lung with pinpoint accuracy, while Armsmaster kept him at bay with judicious application of what seemed to be tinkertech pepper spray. Aegis, above, swooped in every so often for just long enough to be burnt before dragging himself back out, whereas Dauntless was leaving gouges in Lung’s body with each swing of his spear, but to little actual effect otherwise.

Fire flickered around the now very-abandoned street, lurching for a moment as it surged towards them in a wave. Circus, stepping ahead, did some weird half-gesture with their hands, managing to just barely prevent the fire from washing over them, misdirecting it.

“Okay, so, Spitfire you—spit fire, right?” Circus asked, glancing back towards the eponymous cape in question.

“...Yeah?” Spitfire replied in the sort of tone one uses when they’re unsure if this is a trap or if you’re just rather stupid.

“Well, I can _control fire_ ,” Circus led on, clearly trying to get Spitfire to follow their train of logic.

“Isn’t he fireproof like that?” Spitfire hedged, instead, still sounding mightily wary.

“So is steel,” Circus said, apparently reaching the end of their rope. “But your fire eats through it anyway. Use your brain.”

But this was giving Taylor an idea. Another stupid one, but an idea. “I might have a plan,” she said, slowly, still working the kinks out in her brain. It was a rather complicated plan, with lots of moving parts.

Heads turned towards her, seeking guidance.

“We burn out his eyes.”

“What is it with you and maiming people?!” Spitfire screeched.

“My power doesn’t have many other options!” Taylor pointed out, rather justifiably. “I make exploding fucking dragons who breathe fire like a blow torch! Cut me some slack!”

To which, as far as she could tell, both Circus and Spitfire did, nodding along. Pyrokinetics understood the inherent difficulties in using something that most people, Brute or not, would not be able to endure conventionally. They got where she was coming from.

“So, burning his eyes out?” Circus hedged.

Spitfire nodded. “Burning his eyes out.”

Keeping enough distance between themselves and the ever-growing dragon, Taylor watched raptly as Spitfire did as her name so encouraged. Circus, next to the torrent of flaming liquid, again made some vague gestures with her hand, shaping and twisting the fire, building it up into something of a single large blanket of napalm.

“Gonna distract him,” Taylor decided, rather simply. Tugging at her dragons, she urged them into the air with a few whispered words, even her wowser. His sacrifice would be hard, but necessary.

“Take out his knees,” she said, at last, and off went her dragons. Lung, rather distracted between the mob of parahumans trying to keep him down, was not in a place to really engage with her floating menaces. Her first dragon attached itself to his upper shoulder, her second to one knee, and her wowser to his other. At once, with little prompting, they all detonated.

Lung collapsed, down one and a half legs and part of an arm.

The surge of flame that had been building up now took this chance to finally be launched, a collective ball of concentrated napalm and horror. It less hit, more splashed into Lung’s face, which was now on the ground, and proceeded to stick to it as any good face-hugger might.

He tried to scream and the fire, rather simply, just went into his mouth. He didn’t do much of anything after that point, outside of the thrashing, no more roars. Smart man.

Not smart enough to avoid Armsmaster taking advantage of his body focusing on healing all the parts she just took off and beginning to stab into him a frankly _worrying_ amount of syringes. Like, eight or nine too many. Mostly stabbing him where, from what Taylor could see, would appear to be where Spitfire’s fire had quite literally melted some of his scales.

Badass, but kinda gross. But who was she to judge?

The rest of the responders responded as expected by the PRT and began foaming Lung down with a truly unthinkable amount of containment foam. Enough to block off most of the street, really, like a huge snowbank which was slowly growing smaller as whatever Armsmaster finished shanking the dragon with started to take effect.

Actually, now that she was looking around, there wasn’t much _but_ the three of them and the heroes. Heroes who thought she was a villain.

She was pretty sure if she didn’t leave, she was going to be arrested.

By the look of Circus’ expression and the way Spitfire was edging towards the alleyways again, they probably had the same thought.

Her costume was covered in soot, she smelled like dragon farts - sulphur, in this case - and she had likely just made her life infinitely more hard if she ever wanted to be a hero by virtue of most people assuming she very much wasn’t one.

But at least she wasn’t on fire, and that was a very good thought indeed. Good enough to give her the second wind to start sprinting in the opposite direction of the heroes, now that they were distracted, in any event.

**Author's Note:**

> So, happy belated Christmas. This is not the super-secret project I've been working on, but rather a fever-driven snippet built primarily from me spending my holidays rereading Prachett. I tried - and I'm not sure if I really succeeded - to emulate some of his humor styling, as well as overall tone of the setting.
> 
> I was tempted to put like, subscript numbers/references in a separate list but I am frankly too lazy and the effort of formatting that on Ao3 isn't worth it. Sorry. Hope you enjoyed anyway.


End file.
